Job 27

The Hebrew of v. 1 - vayyosef Iyyov se'et meshalo - literally “and Job continued to lift up his mashal” - uses the same formal term the Old Testament uses for Balaam's oracles (Num. 23:7, 18; 24:3, 15) and the wisdom poems of the prophets (Isa. 14:4; Mic. 2:4). A mashal is a formal, sworn, weighty statement, not casual speech. The chapter is telling the reader that what follows is not Job's ordinary lament but a formal oath under the witness of God Himself.

The chapter is the closing legal statement of the book's deepest case.

Verse 2 is theologically remarkable. Job swears by the very God who has, by his own complaint, “taken away my judgment” and “vexed my soul.” The Bible does not soften the paradox. Job is not pretending the God he is swearing by has been kind to him. He is swearing by the God whose hand he experiences as the source of his suffering, the same God he refuses to lie about himself to please. The chapter is asking the reader to feel the strangeness: Job's oath is held together by the very God whose treatment of him he is in the process of protesting.

The integrity is real because the One whose name he swears by is real, regardless of how His current providence feels.

Verse 7 is one of the more theologically uncomfortable sentences in the chapter. Let mine enemy be as the wicked, and he that riseth up against me as the unrighteous. Job is, with deliberate provocation, applying the friends' categorization of him (he is wicked, he is unrighteous) to his actual enemies - including, implicitly, the friends themselves. The chapter is teaching that there are moments in the Christian life when speaking the friends' theology back at them is the only honest move left.

The friends have classified Job as wicked. Job, in v. 7, agrees to use that classification - and applies it to the people who classified him that way. The Bible records the move without softening it. It is the same kind of rhetorical reversal Christ uses on the Pharisees throughout the gospels (cf. Matt. 23:13-33, the seven woes).

Verses 11-12 contain the chapter's most striking pedagogical move. I will teach you by the hand of God: that which is with the Almighty will I not conceal. Behold, all ye yourselves have seen it; why then are ye thus altogether vain? Job is announcing that he is going to teach the friends doctrine of God - the very subject they have been trying to teach him. The chapter is inverting the pedagogical hierarchy.

The student is taking the teacher's seat. And what the student is going to teach is the same theology the teachers should have known but didn't. The Bible is making a point that runs through the whole canon: God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise (1 Cor. 1:27). The sufferer on the ash heap will end up teaching the comfortable theologians the things they should have known about God all along.

Verses 13-23 are one of the most discussed text-critical puzzles in the book of Job. The passage describes the fate of the wicked in language remarkably similar to what Zophar would have said had he given a third speech (cf. Zophar's second speech in Job 20). Zophar never speaks again after chapter 20, and many scholars have suspected that the editor placed Zophar's missing material in Job's mouth. Other readers - both ancient and modern - read the passage as Job sincerely affirming what is true about the wicked, in order to distinguish himself from them.

Either way, the passage's rhetorical effect is to grant the friends what is true in their theology of the wicked (yes, the wicked do eventually face judgment) while withholding the misapplication (Job is not the wicked). The chapter is performing surgical theological argument: agreeing on the principle, disagreeing on the diagnosis.

Verse 19 contains a haunting image. The rich man shall lie down, but he shall not be gathered: he openeth his eyes, and he is not. The verse is one of the most psychologically vivid pictures of sudden death in the Old Testament. The rich man lies down rich, opens his eyes - and is not. The Greek parallel that comes to mind is Christ's parable of the rich fool: Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided? (Luke 12:20).

The chapter is documenting the same dynamic Christ would later parable. Possessions accumulated in this life do not transfer. The eye that opens at the moment of death opens onto a world where the silver and the raiment do not come along.